Chapter Text
Faith drew in a breath. It was an old habit... back in the day, she'd have taken a long, deep drag and slowly exhaled what was left of the smoke. That was then, though, before B had used her feminine wiles to persuade her to can the habit. Damn, she wished she could pull some nicotine into her lungs this morning. Bubblegum vapes were so not her jam.
Four doughnuts rode shotgun in a paper bag. Two of them had cream in 'em. She had plans for those.
Giles had insisted the meeting was important. Which, in Giles-speak, usually meant either someone had unearthed an ancient evil or Xander had accidentally ordered another cursed object from eBay. Faith swung the truck into the yard, grabbed the bag, and took the steps to the library two at a time.
Faith shouldered the library door open and stopped two steps in. Someone had beaten her to it – a woman perched on the edge of the research table, sleeves rolled to her elbows, absently turning a wicked-looking throwing knife over and over between her fingers. She wasn't reading. Wasn't pacing. Just... waiting.
She looked up as Faith walked in.
"I was beginning to think you'd changed your mind." A small smile. "Or got arrested."
She pushed herself off the table, caught the knife neatly by its handle and let it rest, point down, against her thigh.
"I'm Monica Reyes." She held out her free hand. "I've heard a lot about you." A beat. "Some of it was even true."
She tilted her head, studying Faith with the sort of calm curiosity that was more unsettling than suspicion.
"You look disappointed. You were expecting someone else."
Faith tipped her head back slightly, jutting her chin. "You know that much and you're still usin' a blade to flirt with me?" She took a step forward and dumped her canvas bag onto a desk, doughnuts balanced on top. "Don't know who you are, sweetcheeks, or who you think you're playing with, but you should know knives like that are MY love language."
Head cocked to one side and a trademark grin bringing her dimples out of hiding, Faith had just the right amount of swagger, and the exact level of readiness to rival a cat watching a mouse while pretending to sleep.
Reyes didn't withdraw her hand. If anything, the grin widened, though only slightly.
"I've never really believed in intimidation. I've always found curiosity gets you much further." Her eyes drifted back to Faith's face. "The knife isn't for you. It's because people get strangely nervous when a federal agent walks into a town like this one without one. Honestly, I think the knife makes them feel better."
She folded her arms loosely.
"So... are we flirting? I'm asking because I don't like making assumptions."
"Damn, babygirl, you're not wastin' time. You on the clock or something? Got some fatass partner waiting in a black SUV with a box of doughnuts?" Faith nodded towards the blade. "You really wanna get your flirt on, you're gonna need to put Betsy down. She's pretty and all, but history'll tell you there's only one gal strong enough for pointy foreplay with me, and she's way prissier than you."
She calculated every possibility and angle, then shifted right into the agent's personal space, cocking a brow and salaciously dragging the tip of her finger down the side of the blade.
Reyes didn't move – not backwards, not forwards. She watched Faith's fingertip glide down the flat of the blade with the same mild interest someone else might reserve for watching rain on a window.
One eyebrow lifted. "Betsy?" She glanced affectionately at the knife. "I've been calling her Mildred. I think she'd prefer Betsy."
The corner of her mouth twitched. "You know, every report I read said you'd try to own the room within thirty seconds. They got one thing wrong. They thought you'd do it because you wanted to intimidate people." She turned the blade a fraction in her hand – not pulling it away, not challenging Faith's touch, just sharing the space. "I don't think that's it at all. I think you do it because if you're the one closing the distance, nobody else gets to decide when they leave."
Silence – not awkward, just long enough to let the words settle.
She ruined the moment completely. "And for the record, I resent the implication that I couldn't rock an SUV and doughnuts. Although I'd probably substitute decent coffee."
Faith let out a small chuckle and took a step back, gesturing to the space she was leaving with a wide sweep of her arms. "I don't got a lot of friends. Not real ones. Anyways, a bunch of 'em are gonna walk through those doors any time now, and if you think I'm not gonna make sure some broad with a knife ain't getting anywhere close to 'em, you don't know much about me at all. Unless, Agent Tits-and-Teeth, you only read up on the old prototype. She was way more fucked up. This here's Faith 2.0... just as deadly, way more sexy, and with a shedload of shiny new conscience."
She nodded at the blade. "Now, you gonna put Betsy away before you hurt yourself? A lady doesn't get flowers while she's waving a knife around."
Reyes listened without interrupting. She'd spent years interviewing murderers, grieving parents, cult leaders and people who insisted the impossible had happened, and one thing she'd learned was that if someone was telling you who they were, the clever move was to stop preparing your next sentence and actually listen.
When Faith finished, Reyes looked down at the knife. "Hm."
With an almost absent-minded movement, she slid Betsy – or Mildred, depending on the day – into the sheath on her belt. The soft click echoed around the library.
"There." She spread her hands. "Happy? I wasn't carrying her because I was worried about you. I was carrying her because towns like this have an unfortunate habit of proving me right."
A tiny grin crept in. "Also, 'Faith 2.0' is a terrible product name. Makes you sound like software. I'd have gone with 'Faith: Revised Edition'. Or 'Now with 37% more conscience.'"
The grin finally escaped. "I should warn you, I don't embarrass very easily. I've interviewed serial killers who tried to flirt with me. They were significantly less charming."
The faint sound of approaching footsteps echoed from the corridor.
Reyes might have interviewed everyone from serial killers to child traffickers, but Faith Lehane had faced far bigger bads. Slime. Stink. Goo. Blood. Way more dust than she'd ever believed possible. No way was she going to be intimidated by someone claiming to be a cop. "Wrong again, cutie." She pulled out a chair, swung it round in front of her and straddled it, casually folding her arms across the backrest. "Now, as you've been a good girl and sheathed your shiny shaft, how about you relax, sit your ass down, and we can pick this up later."
She shot the agent the sweetest smile she could muster, just as the library doors swung open.
* * *
The first person through was Xander.
He took one look at the scene. Faith straddling a chair backwards. A woman in a smart suit standing opposite her. A knife conspicuously absent, yet clearly having been present five minutes earlier.
He stopped dead. "...Should I come back?"
Reyes turned without the slightest hint of embarrassment. "That depends."
"On...?"
She looked back towards Faith. "Has she finished interviewing me?"
Faith's grin widened. Xander frowned. "...Okay. I have absolutely no idea what's happening."
"That's probably for the best," Reyes replied.
"Usually is," Xander muttered.
Buffy appeared in the doorway behind him, a battered folder tucked beneath one arm. Her eyes moved automatically. Faith. Unknown woman. Distance between them. No obvious weapons. Faith looked... relaxed.
Interesting.
"You must be Monica."
Reyes nodded once. "And you're Buffy."
"I am." They shook hands. Buffy's gaze flicked briefly towards Faith. "So... has she threatened you yet?"
Reyes considered the question with complete seriousness. "Technically? She complimented my knife."
Faith snorted. "I called it pretty."
"You did."
"And?"
Reyes' expression remained perfectly straight. "She also informed me that knives were her love language."
Xander made a strangled noise that sounded suspiciously like someone trying not to laugh.
Buffy closed her eyes for a second. "...Faith."
"What?"
"You flirted with the federal agent."
Faith threw her hands in the air. "Hey, she started it!"
Reyes' eyebrow rose. "I introduced myself."
"Exactly." Faith pointed triumphantly. "Classic opening move."
Buffy looked from one woman to the other, then to Xander, then back again. "...I've been here less than thirty seconds."
Xander nodded solemnly. "It's already become the second weirdest meeting we've had this month."
Faith leaned back in the chair, completely unrepentant. "Told ya she was cute."
Reyes smiled, almost to herself. Without taking her eyes off Faith, she said, "I can see why everyone's so protective of her."
Faith opened her mouth with another comeback already loaded... and, for the first time since walking into the library, found herself coming up empty.
* * *
Willow arrived with a loaded tray – teapot at one end, a jug of coffee at the other – and the particular serenity of a woman who had long ago accepted that no meeting in this family started on time. Dawn followed her in, poured the agent a coffee, asked how she took it, and drifted to a chair by the window.
"I figured if there were doughnuts involved," Willow said, setting the tray down, "there should probably be tea before someone suggested coffee counted as hydration."
Faith nodded her thanks as Willow deposited a coffee next to her. "Lookin' hot, Red. And not just the coffee."
Willow laughed as she settled into her chair. "I set that one up myself, didn't I? I'll take 'lookin' hot' as a compliment."
Faith deliberately picked out one of the cream doughnuts and made sure she was eye-level with Monica as she took the first, slow, entirely innocent bite. "You guys gonna catch me up on why we suddenly have a Fed in a Scoobs meet? I mean, I'm now pretty sure she's not a strip-a-gram for my birthday."
Xander followed Faith's line of sight to Reyes, then to the doughnut. "...Nope." He held up both hands. "I am not narrating whatever psychological warfare just happened over the pastry."
Buffy sighed the sigh of someone who'd had this conversation, in one form or another, for years. "Faith."
"What?"
"...Behave."
"I am."
"You absolutely are not."
Reyes watched the room for a moment. The easy interruptions. The familiar rhythm. The way everyone seemed to know exactly where they belonged. It wasn't what she'd expected. She'd been briefed on a team of supernatural combatants. What she'd found felt much more like a family.
She glanced once towards Faith, then looked back to Buffy. "I can see why people stay."
Buffy smiled faintly. "Most days? So can I."
A folder landed on the table with a soft thump. Giles rested one hand on it.
"If we could all, for just a few minutes, refrain from either flirting or consuming the research..." His eyes drifted to Xander. "...that would be immensely helpful."
Xander slowly lowered the half-eaten doughnut he'd been hovering over an ancient manuscript. "I feel unfairly targeted."
Giles opened the folder and withdrew three glossy photographs, laying them carefully on the table. "Agent Reyes contacted us because these cases bear a rather unfortunate resemblance to something recorded in the Council archives."
He slid one photograph towards Buffy. "The victims disappear for approximately seventy-two hours." Another photograph. "They return physically unharmed." A third. "Every one of them insists someone sang to them."
Reyes nodded. "They don't remember faces. They don't remember places. They remember..." She glanced briefly around the table. "...music."
Xander frowned. "...Okay. I don't like that already."
Reyes reached into her briefcase and produced a slim cassette recorder, placing it beside the photographs. "We interviewed the most recent survivor yesterday. He couldn't describe where he'd been. He couldn't tell us who took him. Before we left, though..." She looked at Giles. "...he started humming."
Giles' expression darkened almost imperceptibly. "You recognised it."
"I didn't." Reyes shook her head. "But someone at Quantico did. He said if I ever found myself investigating a melody that people remembered but couldn't place... I should find Rupert Giles."
The room fell quiet.
Xander looked from Giles to the recorder. "...Please tell me that's not as ominous as it sounded."
Giles didn't answer immediately. Instead, he reached out and very carefully pulled the cassette recorder towards himself.
Faith stopped playing with her food and jumped down from the table. She might have spent years in a cell, but she'd been gifted a deep set of resounding memories she'd later discovered had everything to do with Dawn. Gently, she put a hand on Buffy's shoulder.
"B, this sound like that fancy demon our Dawnie let out that time?"
Buffy frowned, her eyes never leaving the photographs. For a long second she didn't answer.
Then, slowly, she nodded.
"I was hoping it wasn't."
* * *
The meeting broke the way their meetings always broke – Giles disappearing into the stacks with the recorder, Willow already three tabs deep into missing-persons reports, Xander volunteering to check whether any of the victims lived near anything that could generously be described as a nightclub.
Faith grabbed the doughnut bag and headed for the corridor. Buffy fell into step beside her without appearing to decide to.
"So." Faith bumped her shoulder. "The Fed reckons you're all protective of me."
"She's a profiler. Noticing the obvious is basically her whole job description."
Faith laughed – a proper one, from somewhere low. She glanced sideways, and found Buffy already looking back at her. Neither of them looked away first.
Buffy reached across, took the bag out of Faith's hand, helped herself to the last doughnut – the other one with cream in it – and carried on walking.
Faith watched her go, grinning at nothing and nobody.
"...Yeah," she murmured. "Way prissier."